> That's not simple at all

I did not mean simple in terms of implementation; you're absolutely right :)

> and restrict freedom of the press while you're doing it

Yeah. I think there's better ways. There's a lot to it... we need to incentivize media to report on the facts without twisting them, criminalize abuses of trust and power, create meaningful "trust rating" systems that actually impact audiences' willingness to follow certain sources (like we have with restaurants).

"You can't say x" is a pointless game of whack-a-mole and has the arbiter as a single point of failure. We need a better system altogether.

What we need is better education, teaching critical thinking, and scepticism. If more people had the skills needed to look at a newspaper report and see that it's fabricated nonsense then no one would buy that newspaper, incentivising them to report on reality instead.

Sadly, politicians quite like the ability to manipulate the public via their friends in the press, and very few of them are going to campaign for making that less effective.

Do politicians manipulate the public via the press, or does the press control politicians via the public?

I believe that media outlets used to have to compete on credibility - a little critical thinking distributed throughout the population made a difference. But with so much consolidation of mass media, especially behind the scenes, one is left picking between only a few fundamental options. If they're all trash, where else are you going to go? It much tougher to take a principled stand and reject all mass media outlets rather than the easy route of identifying with the ones that better stroke your biases.